The Bishkek 2nd Valkyrie: Part 6: I am done with this!

Just letting you know right away: I am done with working on large models like the Valk for a while. With the Manticore and the Valkyrie I have had great fun and I have learned a lot, especially using the ForgeWorld modeling book. But in order to be a great modeler, you have to have lots of stamina, stick with it, do the best all the time, the whole way and never letting your guard down. And in that I failed. I had the same with the Manticore, in the end I just finished it as quickly as I could. Same thing happened this time. I worked so hard on the camo and the weathering and when that was done, I kind of wanted to stop. I didn't but now the end result feels like a letdown. Don't want to make anyone sad, but you all know what I am talking about, the fatigue that the likes of Dave Taylor don't seem to suffer from.

Anyway, here are the final pictures of the Valk. Be prepared, I do have a lot to show (and complain about).

Topshot. I worked hard on the exhaust soot, not just on the roof, but also on the back wings.....

and the inside parts:

I also worked on the soot of the wing engines

Here are the wings. The muck on this part of the wing is the fuel cap leaking while flying through dust chem storms

The other wing

keeping the weathering under control is so hard to do, its pretty aggravating. I should probably just build chaos vehicles where you can go all out. Then again, a workhorse like this should get battered up pretty badly in the desert.

Here's the Bishkek 2nd number

On to the pilots. The cockpit is challenging to finalize and I had to use all kinds of clamps and rubber bands to make it work, but it did. It was great fun painting the pilots and the interior.

inside the navigators spot

It's really hard not to mess up the 'glass'. You can see I failed to do it well, see glue in the left bottom corner of the front part of the cockpit. When that happened I was really disappointed, because I had kept the glass safe for the entire time of building, in the end a little too much glue will just push you over the edge.

and the other side, pilot has his red insignia on his arm

Here's the inside. I had to shave off a bit of the cockpit frame to make the roof come off easily.

I made the guns movable on their arms, but also on their own axis, so the heavy bolters can shoot forward, dramatically increasing the shooting arc of the guns....

And here is the base:

The stand for the plane is a prototype that I received from Dragon Forge Design to try out and see if I liked it. YES, I love it, this stand is way more robust and handy then the GW one plus it looks better. The base come separate and is great. Jeff doesn't have this thing online but if you all leave comments he might speed things up a bit, maybe we can even do a Give Away with one of them...

Here's the piece that goes under your plane

And this is what it looks like

and

Painted:

and the final images

A keen observer might have noticed the lack of ammo. I couldn't get myself to finish that part up, but I will in the very near future, magnetized of course.

Thanks for following me on this weathering journey. My next model will be a Dwarf.

Mike